Today, UD. Tomorrow, the World

The same could surely be said for the roughly 235 other doctoral candidates from the Class of 2024 who came to UD from 32 countries as part of their quest to change their world. The youngest of them is just 24 years old; the oldest is 64, opting to push for progress rather than slide smoothly into retirement. At the ceremony, the graduates represented eight University colleges and one school, having mastered fields of study ranging from applied mathematics to marine studies to interdisciplinary neuroscience.

Yet they shared a trait common to doctoral graduates everywhere: They had already pushed the cutting edge of progress a little further into the future, long before they got their degrees.

“Among our candidates are scholars who have developed new insights into the history of our country and others who have discovered new mathematical ideas that enrich our conceptual understanding of just about everything,” Lou Rossi, dean of UD’s Graduate College and vice provost for graduate and professional education, told the crowd.

Now, the task is to use that degree as leverage, to fortify it with the power of their passion, and to help lift the world out of its many predicaments, UD leaders urged the students.

“There is no shortage of problems that need to be solved, conflicts that need to be settled, questions that need to be answered. They fill our news feeds every day,” UD President Dennis Assanis told the graduates. “In fact, there are so many grand challenges that sometimes we might want to give up.

“But I believe those are exactly the times when we need to lean into the grand challenges and come up with grand solutions, to fully engage with them,” Assanis added.

At the same time, the graduates must be mindful that they alone cannot possibly comprehend the broader scope of these problems, much less solve them, Assanis said. The quest for progress demands collaboration, and the power to create change rests in many hands being joined together.

“Find the people in communities and organizations who are most affected by the big problems you are trying to solve,” Assanis said. “Listen to them and let their needs inform your research and scholarship. It is so crucial that you engage with each other and collaborate across disciplines and cultures.”

As a group, graduates with doctoral diplomas represent just 2% of American adults with college degrees. But the graduates were told that their relatively small numbers bely a more communal reality — that their knowledge was built on the wisdom of many scholars who came before them, and that their academic success was made possible by people who supported them.

“It is important to recognize the act of hooding, too, is a symbol — a symbol of the passing of knowledge, expertise and skill from your faculty mentor to you,” UD Provost Laura Carlson said.

It’s also an achievement that relies on more than a few friends and family. Both were in plentiful supply at the ceremony — dads and moms, partners and babies, even soulmates and classmates.

“We went to school together literally from kindergarten through high school,” said Becca Ivers of bioinformatics data science graduate Rachel Ann Keown. The friendship has been so close through the years that the pair are now “practically sisters.”

“It’s been a journey that she never gave up,” Ivers said. “She’s been on vessels out in the ocean working for this degree. She really is amazing.”

Those kinds of words become a sustenance of sorts for doctoral students who have spent four, five or even seven years earning the title of “doctor,” Rossi said.

“It’s hard to do that without having people who know you, who care about you and are there for you,” Rossi said. They may not leave the ceremony with a degree of their own, but they have earned their own sort of glory, the graduates were told.

“To the family and friends of our graduates, I want to say, ‘Thank you. Thank you for your support and encouragement.’ It has been absolutely essential to their success,” Assanis said.

None of those supporting actors may have made it to the stage, but they played their parts well from their seats in the cheering crowd. High above the floor at the Bob, amid the happy burbling of the baby that accompanied them, DeVonte Moore’s five friends were there to see him take his chemistry and biochemistry degree.

One of them, former classmate and fellow UD chemistry and biochemistry doctoral degree recipient Patrick Beardslee, had few doubts that his California friend would be one of those change-makers that Assanis hailed.

“He’s committed,” he said of Moore, whose non-infant friends in attendance also included Stacie Beardslee, Christine Rourke, Joey Patria and Susanne Walker.

“He was in California, then drove back to Delaware” to resume his studies after a pause, Stacie Beardslee said.

The faculty members who served over the years as crucial advisors for the graduates were of course in attendance as well, taking the stage and draping their “mentees” with the 4-foot-long doctoral hood — lined with blue and gold, naturally — then standing by proudly as happy celebrations ensued.

“Thanks for seeing her through,” communication graduate Emily Pfender’s family said to her advisor, professor Scott Caplan.

“We did it!” Caplan said to his newly minted doctor before offering her family some friendly academic advice. “Now that she’s a doctor, whatever she says, you have to listen to, especially if it’s about social media research.”

Pfender wasn’t so sure about that, but she was certain that her UD degree was time well spent: Next, she heads off for a job as a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, aiming to use her hard-earned expertise to examine the ways that information on social media can impact people’s health outcomes.

“I do know that doing a Ph.D. is one of the best decisions I ever made,” she said. “It’s been about the development of knowledge, and I don’t think there’s anything more important than that.”

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Article by Eric Ruth. Photos by Kathy F. Atkinson and Evan Krape.